BLACKER, CARMEN

   Formerly professor of Japanese in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Cambridge, Blacker has carried out extensive research on religious practices and folklore, including shamanism, mountain asceticism, and animal witchcraft in Japan. Her publications, especially The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan (1999), remain central texts in the study of Japanese religions but may not have received the attention they deserve in the wider, more comparative study of shamanism.